DENVER — On multiple levels, the Los Angeles Lakers team that stands in front of the Denver Nuggets in a Western Conference first-round playoff matchup is different than the team the Nuggets swept last spring.
LeBron James is a healthier and arguably better version of himself. The Lakers are more aware of their strengths and limitations as a group, the product of being together for another year. Gabe Vincent and Spencer Dinwiddie are in, while Dennis Schroder has moved on. Los Angeles is a better offensive team, more dynamic on that side of the basketball and a team that believes itself equipped to challenge the defending NBA champions.
But when you’ve beaten a team nine consecutive times like the Nuggets have the Lakers, something is deeply and fundamentally flawed in the matchup on the part of Los Angeles. Saturday night’s Game 1 before a sold-out crowd at Ball Arena served as the latest example. Denver walked with a 114-103 win, which seems fine enough without context. But then again, almost everything comes with context.
So consider this.
The Nuggets trailed by as much as 49-37 in the first half. Denver’s star guard Jamal Murray scored 22 points, but went 9-of-24 from the field to get there. James and Anthony Davis combined to score 59 points, grab 20 rebounds and hand out 13 assists. Denver didn’t play well defensively until it hit the proverbial gas pedal in the third quarter.
One can argue the Lakers should have either won Game 1 or had a good shot at winning in the final possessions of the game. And yet, garbage time from the deep reserves defined the waning minutes. Smiles were omnipresent on the Denver bench, and the Game 1 win turned out to be a relatively comfortable one.
“We have not been playing well, but you have to give the Lakers a lot of credit,” Nuggets head coach Michael Malone said. “They came out playing very well. They had us on our heels, and they sent a message that they were here and this is a brand new series. But, there was a timeout, and we were down 8 points and I said, hey guys we aren’t playing great. We were missing a bunch of open looks, but we had a chance to get back into the game if we changed how we defended. I thought once we improved the defense, we were going to have a chance to get out and run ourselves. And that turned out to be how things played out.”
Bullseye 🎯 pic.twitter.com/lqVINguujM
— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) April 21, 2024
The Nuggets played extremely well for a five-minute second-quarter stretch that got them back in the game. They put together 10 very good third-quarter minutes that flipped the game. In truth, however, the Lakers dominated most of the first half and played well in the fourth quarter. In that sense, the deep-rooted advantages the Nuggets enjoyed last season are very much present this time around. And those advantages go deeper than simply saying Denver is the better team.
Like last season, the Nuggets defense took Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell out of the game. But unlike many teams, Denver seems to realize that Russell simply won’t stop shooting and trying to impact a game in a different way when he misses a few. So, as the game progressed, the Nuggets sent more blitzing action defensively and James and Davis funneled the action toward Russell by doubling off him. When Russell was on the ball, Denver went under screens, knowing the temptation for him to keep shooting would be too much. Sure enough, Russell capped a 6-of-20 night in 41 minutes of shooting the Lakers into a double-digit deficit.
On the other end of the floor, Denver hunted Russell and Austin Reaves, making them guard pick-and-rolls, which led to open shots. And this is to say nothing about the obvious lack of an answer for Nikola Jokic, who scored 32 points, while grabbing 12 rebounds and handing out seven assists. The Nuggets have become the rare NBA team that makes you essentially play 48 minutes of near perfect basketball to beat them when they are locked in.
You can argue the Lakers played almost 36 minutes of said basketball Saturday night, and it didn’t matter. If you slip against the Nuggets, if you miss a defensive assignment, if you miss open shots for a spell, if you don’t take care of the basketball, Denver makes you pay. It’s demoralizing when you think about it. Against most teams, the Lakers did enough Saturday night to either win or make it a possession game down the stretch. But against the Nuggets, the stretch run became a Game 1 coronation.
“I think we know who we are, and that’s important,” Jokic said. “I think we know how to play together and it helps in games like this. We have a lot of guys who can do a lot of things, and I think our roles are set. We know what to do in every situation and I think that’s the best way to describe us right now.”
The third quarter is a good example. The Lakers broke under the offensive pressure the Nuggets exhibited. Denver kept scoring on consecutive possessions, which put the onus on Los Angeles to match. Eventually, it couldn’t. Eventually, the Nuggets opened an 81-75 lead. That grew to 84-75 when Kentavious Caldwell-Pope knocked home a transition 3-pointer.
To beat the Nuggets, perfection has to be a goal. But it may go beyond that in this matchup, which is why Denver’s win streak over the Lakers stands at nine. There are so many matchup issues. There are so many defensive leaks to plug. Eventually, the leaks become too much, and you become the Titanic and sink. Maybe Denver plays with its food a bit in this series, although the Nuggets have been sensational over the past two years at focusing on the task ahead of them. Maybe the quarter and a half where they couldn’t make a shot turns into 48 minutes where they can’t make a shot.
Perhaps, the Lakers do finally put together the perfect game. But it will just be one game. With so many fundamental changes in the series this season as opposed to last spring, the bottom line remains strikingly familiar. The brilliance of James and Davis are enough to keep Los Angeles competitive with the Nuggets in a singular setting. Games are closer on the scoreboard than they appear.
But the scoreboard remains the same, and so does the overall storyline.
The Nuggets are the better team by a lot, and it looks like it will take extraordinary measures for this series to play out differently than last season.
(Photo of LeBron James and Nikola Jokic: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
